


Terror on Typhon!

by Bonymaloney



Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: (in January), Alcohol, Berserker negotiation, Canon-Typical Violence, Christmas Fluff, Claustrophobia, Established Relationship, F/M, Facials, Found Family, Frottage, Little Spoon Max, Marauders, Max’s horrible religious opinions, Minor Character Death, Mystery, Oral Sex, Rating will change, Side Quests, Snow and Ice, Temperature Play, berserker rage, canuskies, longjohns, told you the rating was going to change, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:40:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28981272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bonymaloney/pseuds/Bonymaloney
Summary: A personal favour to Catherine Malin sends the crew of the Unreliable dashing through the snow... to danger! Can Pearl build her alliance with SubLight in the fight against the Board? What is the mystery of the Glacial Age bottling plant? Will anyone be able to resist throwing snowballs at Max?
Relationships: The Captain/Maximillian DeSoto
Comments: 47
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to Jackalgirl, Kourumi and JumpShip90 for all your help and encouragement.

It was good that they had the suite, Pearl thought. Otherwise six people would be crammed into the galley bickering, desperate to be next into the shower to get the stink of the C&P factory off their skin. As it was, the crew had time and space to disperse, to let the adrenaline wear off before they reconvened at the House of Hospitality dressed for a night on the town. 

With one exception. Max had been sensitive about cannibalism ever since that creepy house outside of Stellar Bay. Easily riled at the best of times, he was the one who had finally crossed off Clive Lumbergh. As such, he ought to be the guest of honour; but he was keeping a low profile around Fallbrook. Pearl thought he wasn’t so much ashamed of what he’d done to Chaney as embarrassed. Either way, he was back on the Unreliable, catching up on some reading. 

It was a warm evening, and Felix and Ellie were in the street outside, smoking and looking down their noses at the tourists. At the bar, Nyoka was arguing with a man who was dressed like a Byzantine but had big pink hair like hers. The conversation was heated, and Parvati was squirming beside them as though only loyalty to her friend was keeping her in her seat. 

Pearl was eager to join the party, even more so for a crisp cold drink, to get the last memory of Slaughterhouse Clive out of her head. But before she was halfway across the room, she was invited to step into the back office. 

Catherine handed her a heavy bottomed glass of rum’n’somethin. It wasn’t cold, but it would get the job done. The legitimate businesswoman raised her own glass with a grimace that was the closest Pearl figured she ever came to a smile, but her eyes were amused. 

“Where’s your Vicar? Right about him, wasn’t I? Blackest of holes behind his eyes. Ha!”

“He’s back on the ship.”

“Keeping him confined? Smart move. Shows respect.”

Peal tried to keep her displeasure from her face. She was torn between the desire to stick up for Max, and the memory of the way she’d felt when she realised he’d lied to her. Disrespected was the least of it.

“He killed Clive,” she said eventually.

Malin brightened. “I knew I liked him. I like you too, Captain. You’re a problem solver, and I’ve got another problem I need solved.” Her harsh voice stirred up a mixture of revulsion and desire inside Pearl, and she leaned forward despite herself. “My bar’s running out of whiskey.”

“What?”

“Iceberg Aged. You come to Fallbrook, you wanna gamble and fight and drink your bodyweight in nasty ass whiskey. Used to be common as sprat shit. But now you can’t find a drop of the stuff between here and Steller Bay.”

“How does a bar run out of whiskey. You can’t salvage it from somewhere?”

“Ms Hagen’s got something bigger on her mind. And my people’ve got a factory to run, thanks to you.” She made it sound as though Pearl had caused her an inconvenience. But a job was a job, and Catherine Malin was a useful person to know. Pearl stood. 

“I’ll look into it.”

The bar was darker and noisier. Nyoka was flushed, and she leaned in so they could yell to each other. 

“Who was that guy?”

“He’s an asshole, Captain! He got taken off Monarch when the corps left, and now he’s back he’s got impossible… impressive… imp - he’s trying to be someone he’s not!” Her voice was scornful, but her lipstick was smeared. Parvati was asleep in a corner. 

When they left Fallbrook SubLight had their factory, and Pearl had a hold full of boarstwurst and a cart full of bits. She lay back in her bunk, staring at the C&P plaque on the wall, and her tired thoughts kept her from sleep. 

The Iconoclasts wanted to fight the Board, but they were broke and lived in a hole in the ground. Groundbreaker didn’t fight the Board, but managed to keep up an awkward co-dependent relationship. SubLight were far more comfortable, thriving in the spaces where the Board didn’t. It was almost like the more stuff you had, the happier you were with the status quo; only a lot of the serfs she met believed in the Board too. That was cause of the Scientism, but Max insisted that OSI wasn’t the same thing as the Board, not by a long shot. 

Phineas wanted to overthrow the Board, but all he had was her. They were going to need people. And afterwards, if they won, they would need resources. Like the boarst factory...

No one could explain how the plaque had gotten there. The note on it said it came from the King. It gave Pearl the creeps, so she pulled it down, carried it to the hold, and used a plasma pistol to burn it. 

By morning, she was feeling pragmatical. Whatever else may happen, the Unreliable was her own little piece of the colony. As far as she was concerned it was the best, and she intended to keep it that way. They needed fuel and water, and the kind of repairs that Parvati couldn’t manage on the fly. ADA set a course for Groundbreaker, and Pearl felt her spirits brighten as they flew. 

Parvati could scarcely wait for the doors to open when they landed. Pearl grinned at the sight of her. practically skipping through the airlock and down the stairs, rushing ahead of the rest of the crew as they cleared customs in her eagerness to see Junlei. Max was watching her too, with a look of incredible fondness on his face. It made him handsome in a whole different way, Pearl thought, open hearted and warm. 

When he realised she was watching him he scowled, self-conscious, quickly fixing his expression in a dour grimace. Pearl felt a surge of affection wash over her, and she linked her arm in his as they made their way onto the Promenade. They called in for a drink at the Lost Hope, and Pearl noted that the price of Iceberg had almost doubled. Afterwards they went through the bazaar and stocked up on clean clothes and ammunition, before finishing up with a bowl of spicy broth from the food stalls that lined the Promenade. 

The next thing to do was to pay their respects to Captain Tennyson. But as they stepped onto the engineering deck, they were waylaid by Edna, gesturing to them from her communications relay. She’d picked up a new signal, and she’d been waiting for a suitable freelancer to stop by. The signal was faint and distorted, but it was clearly a distress call, and Edna had tracked it to Typhon. 

“Well, that explains that,” Max said. “Typhon, the ice planet. It’s the base of operations for Glacial Age.” 

Pearl recognised the name from the tossball team that Max and Felix would cuss out whenever they were mentioned on the aetherwave, and from the label on the bottle that Max kept on the highest shelf in his cabin. It made sense to track the problem to its source. She liked helping people, she liked making bits, and she definitely wanted to see an ice planet. If Pearl had still believed in destiny, she would have said it was on her side. 

The crew pressed up against the windows, staring down at the pale glow of the surface. 

“Ice, huh.” Felix sounded a little nervous. “Dangerous stuff. I knew a guy got crossed off when a chunk of it landed on his head. Fell right off’ve a freighter hull.”

“I don’t mind ice, so long as it’s in a drink,” Ellie replied. 

Pearl had never seen anything like it. Earth was mostly too warm for snow and ice. The settlement walls were great slabs of the stuff, and alongside the office buildings and the bottling plant there was a building that looked like a crystal, sparkling in the floodlights. 

“Oh my stars,” Parvati breathed as they disembarked. “A real life Founding Day market, just like what we used to have back home! Can we go, Captain?”

They didn’t really have a choice, as the market lay between the landing pad and the rest of the settlement, but it was certainly a sight to behold. Stalls lit with candles and lanterns and string lights, piles of trinkets, hot steam rising with the smell of roast meat and burned sugar. A cheerful print of white snowflakes and mammoths on a bright blue background was everywhere to be seen on blankets and sweaters. It seemed strangely familiar to Pearl, although she’d never experienced anything like it before. A memory of a memory. 

The rest of the crew were similarly enthused. Only the Vicar held back, staring down his nose at the assembled crowds. 

“I was always firmly against this frivolity, back in Edgewater. Founding Day ought to be a solemn affair.”

“What’s your problem, Max? Mad cause no one ever gives you any gifts?” Felix sneered. 

“Founding Day is not about gifts. Or candied mockapples, or The Sprat That Lead Them To Water, or any of this nonsense. The first Founding Day market took place when the colonists needed to earn bits in order to buy their rations. It was a means of ensuring that only those who were destined to survive the landing did so. An expression of the Plan, as all things should be.” 

Max turned and walked haughtily towards the sign that marked the edge of the marketplace. Hands firmly in his pockets, the tips of his ears were red with cold. His hair swept elegantly back, drawing the eye towards the nape of his neck, pale and vulnerable. 

It was irresistible. Pearl threw a snowball, and that was all it took. 

Max yelped as the icy powder slid down his collar. Felix gave a cry of delight. He launched another snowball in his direction, but his eagerness he missed Max completely and hit Pearl instead. 

“Sorry, Boss,” he gasped wide-eyed. Pearl laughed and threw one back at him. Nyoka joined the attack on Max, while Ellie increased the chaos by throwing snowballs randomly into the fray. Parvati stood by, squeaking alternately in excitement and distress. 

Max had clearly not made snowballs for a while, but he still had the hand and the eye of a tossball player, and his missiles hit their mark. He drove the others back, and retreated toward the Unreliable. With their primary target gone, the crew paused for breath. Pearl felt her cheeks glowing with cold and the smile on her face. 

After a quick diversion to the market, she made her way back to the ship. Max was leaning on his desk, his skin flushed from a hot shower. He was towelling his hair, and he was wearing…

Pearl shrieked with laughter. 

“What the hell is that?”

Max scowled at her. 

“Edgewater has a temperate climate, and the Mission can get very cold and drafty,” he said primly, and fastened the last buttons on his full length union suit. The fabric stretched across his broad shoulders and clung to his buttocks and thighs, but it was also bright red and cosy and flannel.

“You look fucking adorable. How come I’ve never seen you in that before?”

“I don’t tend to wear it when I’m anticipating company.”

“Have you ever been wearing it under your clothes without me knowing?”

Max’s lips quirked. “I’m afraid that will have to remain a mystery.”

“Fine. Oh, I got you these…”

She handed him the fur lined gloves she’d picked out. 

“Thank you, Captain. But I assure you, my problem with the market is not my own lack of gifts, despite what Mr Millstone might imply. Founding Day celebrates the survival of the fittest. It goes against the very meaning of it to use it to boost Glacial Age’s flagging profits.”

“They’re flagging?”

“Water is more readily available throughout the system than it used to be. And multiple other corporations produce alcoholic beverages. Ms Malin is not the first to notice a problem with availability. I suspect they are simply going out of business.”

“That doesn’t explain the distress call… come back to the market with me. You’ll be warmer now. And besides, if Glacial Age are going out of business then we should enjoy the whiskey while we can.”

“Consider me persuaded.” Max dressed quickly. He pulled his new gloves on, held his hands up to admire them, and smiled. 

When he reached the door, his smile grew anxious, and he turned back to face her.

“Please don’t tell the rest of the crew about my underwear.”


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn’t that he disliked Founding Day, Max ruminated as they made their way back into town. The survival of the most ruthless and industrious colonists was certainly a thing to be celebrated. But nature abhorred equality, and the idea that everyone should receive a gift was simply irrational. Boys who broke their schoolmates noses and were disruptive in class didn’t deserve gifts, for example, and the idea that he would harbour any hard feelings on the matter was merely Mr Millstone projecting his own resentment. 

He hoped he had pleased the Architect this year. It certainly seemed he had pleased his Captain. The gloves she had given him were warm and rather stylish, if he did say so himself. She placed her arm through his and they strolled the market together, and after a few cups of mulled purpleberry wine he was feeling positively benign about the whole affair. The crew were certainly letting off some steam. Dr Fenhill and Ms Remnarin-Wentworth were engaged in a contest at the shooting gallery, while Ms Holcomb waved to them from a stall that sold candied nuts. Millstone was nowhere to be seen, and Max permitted himself to enjoy the moment. 

“Guys! You gotta come see this!”

It couldn’t last. Max followed the Captain towards his young crewmate’s cries. As they drew closer he began to hear other sounds, snorts and yips and growls, and he wished he were more heavily armed. 

“You ever see anything like this? It’s like something out of the serials!”

The creatures were striking, Max had to admit. Heavier set than regular canids, their coats shaded deep blue and pale grey for camouflage against the snow. Their crests were short and thick, fur rather than feathers. Like all canids, their fangs were so large that their jaws were permanently wedged open; and tufts of fur grew down from their muzzles to shield their mouths from the freezing air. 

“They’re canuskies,” he marvelled. “I’ve never seen one in the flesh before.”

“Aww!” Parvati exclaimed. “Look at their little moustaches!”

Pearl too was enchanted. “I had a book with huskies, when I was a kid…” 

“Uh, Boss? It’s pronounced ca- _nu_ -skies,” Felix enunciated, ever helpful. Ellie slapped him on the back of the head. Pearl made as though to pet them, and Max started forward with a warning on his lips, but when she buried her fingers in the thick fur at their necks they wagged their behinds and slavered like the tamest of Byzantium teacups. 

“Care to take a sleigh ride?” A tall blonde stall holder approached them, genuine hope shining through the corporate-mandated cheer. “Why not see Typhon in style? Only ten bits a head!”

She gestured toward the sleds behind her, painted crisp Glacial Age white and blue. Fur blankets and cushions lined the seats, to protect potential customers from the elements. Felix leapt immediately into the front of the first sled. 

“Hey Max,” he called. “Betcha a new pack of tossball cards that mine goes faster.”

Max sniffed and climbed into the other one. 

“I prefer to focus on quality, rather than speed.”

Truth be told, by the time the canuskies were harnessed and the crew were settled with snacks and blankets and Ms Ramnarin-Wentworth’s hip flask, he was wishing for a bit of pace. Once they got moving, however, he was forced to concede that it was rather enjoyable. The motion was smooth, and the Captain was warm beside him. The canuskies pulled in unison, an admirable display of the value of hard work in the service of a collective goal. Their large feet spread their weight, preventing them from sinking into the snow as they ran. Max had to chuckle when Parvati confessed that the pack leader reminded her of Udom Bedford. Young Ms Holcomb was far wittier than she gave herself credit for, although the laughter and praise of the rest of the crew appeared to leave her mortified. 

Their guide, Petra Gilsson, was bright and vivacious as she spouted the usual corporate platitudes. She gave a potted history of the Founding Day market and its role in celebrating the most entrepreneurial colonists, in accordance with the First Pillar. The fate of those who were unable to earn the bits for their rations was glossed over in a manner he found mildly sacrilegious. She talked about Glacial Age’s phenomenal success in the beverage market, the genius of their original chairman who had settled the ice planet and thereby cornered the market in fresh water. New developments in water purification on the other planets of the colony were merely a welcome challenge for Glacial Age. Max scoffed, and Pearl elbowed him in the side. 

He was slightly more interested in Ms Gilsson’s description of the settlement’s construction. Large blocks and hollow spaces were cleared with the use of explosives, and then formed into more manageable shapes with high-pressure drills. Finally, ice masons performed the delicate work of fusing the frozen bricks together, carving the elaborate shapes that decorated the settlement walls and the ice hotel. It was not dissimilar to his own family’s trade; and if their path to Halcyon had been but slightly different then he might have had frostbite to contend with while he was growing up, instead of toxic dust and shards of grit. Would he have ever made his way to Edgewater? If, as he suspected, he had been destined to be there in order to meet the Captain, then surely the Universe would have snapped him into place regardless. But then - 

The sleigh ride was almost over when the marauders attacked. They seemed to come from nowhere, shrieking and howling as they poured between the huts surrounding the canusky pen and swarmed toward the sleds. They wore helmets with horn-shaped protrusions, and their armour was studded with spikes and trimmed with blue-grey fur. Max’s hand went instinctively to his shotgun, which wasn’t there, before dropping to his hip and pulling out his collapsible baton. The crew were lightly armed and dressed for cold rather than combat, because who in their right mind would expect marauders in a fucking corporate headquarters? The baton snapped into place, and a righteous fury began to permeate his brain, quieting his thoughts and sharpening his senses in anticipation of glorious violence. 

“Uh-oh!” Petra’s tone was so light hearted it felt like mockery. “Looks like some marauders on the loose! Wanna help us fight ‘em off?” Max turned to snarl at her, only to have a large blue and white foam axe thrust into his hands. When he looked back, setters were emerging to fight the marauders, carrying round shields plastered with Glacial Age logos and wielding foam axes of their own. It was a sham, he realised, a sketch for the entertainment of the tourists. Parvati and Felix appeared to have caught on, and they ran laughing into the fray. 

But something wasn’t right. In amongst the mimicry there were genuine fights breaking out. One of the attackers was being dragged away by rope lassoes attached to poles that Max presumed were more commonly used to wrangle wayward canuskies. Another was pinned to the ground by settlers desperately clinging to their arms and legs. A young blond man with hair falling into his eyes was snapping his teeth at anyone who approached; biting frantically at his axe handle and his own forearm and the wood panelling of the sled, working his way toward them. Pearl drew her sword, only to be grabbed from behind. 

Petra’s face was locked in a mask of anxiety and fear. No, he realised; not a mask. For the first time since he’d met her, her expression was sincere. It was raw emotion, and the desperation in her voice made his hair stand on end. 

“Please don’t,” she begged. “He’s my brother!”

Max flinched as a loud explosion rent the air. Blue and silver fireworks were bursting overhead as the actors dispersed. The blond man was sitting on the ground in the snow, laughing and laughing.


	3. Chapter 3

Pearl let the weight of her weapon drag her arm back down by her side. She was suddenly very aware of how cold it was, tingling sharp against the bare skin of her face. A short distance away, the lights of the market and the bottling plant brightened the sky, which made the settlement itself feel even darker. The edges of the windows and doors of the surrounding huts glowed warm and inviting, but they were tightly shut. The only sign left of the desperate scene that had taken place only moments before was the churned up snow on the ground. It was spooky quiet, and she suddenly wanted nothing more than to be sitting in the galley of the Unreliable, with the lights on, something good on the stove, and her own door sealed tight behind her

Instead, she went toward the closest hut, where the laughing marauder had vanished along with Petra. She’d said she was his sister? Pearl knocked on the door. A shout rose up from inside and was quickly stifled, and she heard frantic muttering. 

“The ride’s over now, folks.” Petra sounded muffled behind the door, but the strain in her voice was clear. “We need to clear up and reset, but you can come back tomorrow…”

“What happened there, at the end? Was that part of the tour?”

“The stalwart colonists fighting off the marauders has been an integral part of the Glacial Age entertainment package for months now! The spectacular scene was choreographed by Maverick Johnson. Glacial Age spared no expense…” She sounded like she was trying not to cry. 

“Don’t give me that scripted shit… what’s going on?” Pearl pounded on the door again, but there was only silence. She stepped back and looked at her own family. Max stood protectively close, scowling, his body taut and tense. Felix was flushed and he was agitated, casting about like a terrier for the fight he’d been denied. Ellie appeared shaken, although she tried to hide it by checking her pistol and giving it a fanciful twirl. Parvati was fearful, Nyoka resigned. She realised they were all watching her, and waiting. 

“Maverick Johnson, fuckin’... Ok.” She took a deep breath. “I guess we need to take this to the top.”

The crew were somewhat depleted by the time they arrived at the administrative building. Parvati was holding it together, but Pearl sensed her distress. Every rock they turned over in Halcyon had something gross underneath it, and the shock must be even more intense coming in straight after something fun and nostalgic like the Founding Day market. Pearl loved Parvati for her ability to expect the best of things, even after all they’d been through, but it had to be hard on the soul. So she sent her back to the ship with Felix alongside her. She didn’t need his hot headed approach on a fact finding mission; and he and Parvati were close. Obsessing over the latest episodes of their serials together would lift her spirits and calm him down. 

To her surprise, Ellie volunteered to go too. So Pearl, Max and Nyoka were the ones who wandered past the main entrance like a bunch of tourists stretching their legs, not paying attention to the turret mechanicals or the corporate troopers. 

“I made three,” Max murmured. “Two in the doorway, one at the desk.”

“Yeah, and a turret in the fancy chandelier.”

“Five,” Nyoka said, a slight reprimand in her tone. “There’s two more on the steps behind ‘em. And they look like the bad kind.”

“Hmm.” 

Three against five was doable, if she had to. Max wore the custom vintage MSI plates that had been gifted to them by Sanjar, and while Nyoka’s home made armour made her look like a marauder, the hunter swore by its effectiveness. Ordinary troopers couldn't stand against them. But Pearl didn’t really want to go in guns blazing if she could help it. And besides, their weapons and armour were back on the ship, packed in grease and being lovingly watched over by SAM. 

Her gaze wandered to a skybridge that connected the admin building to the bottling plant. She put her arms around Max and Nyoka, wanting them to feel the affection she held for them, also wanting them to look where she was looking. 

“How about up there?”

“Law-damned robbery is what it is,” Max grumbled as they made their way between the giant illuminated bottles that marked the entrance to the plant. They had turned over a full 150 bits between them to take the manufactory tour and sit through a feature entitled The Wonderful World Of Glacial Age. The jingle _So clear, so crisp, so glacially good!_ was stuck in her head; and it was so obnoxious that even the cacophony of the production line couldn’t quite drown it out. Crates of empty bottles were filled with jets of liquid, then removed and just as quickly replaced. Workers in blue and white jumpsuits hustled everywhere the eye could see, applying caps and labels and sealing boxes. Overhead, conveyor belts rattled as they carried the finished product away from the floor. Pearl realised her heart was pounding and her palms were hot, and she forced herself to breathe. There wasn’t gonna be a fire in a water factory. 

A white metallic staircase lead to a catwalk suspended along one side of the cavernousbuilding, with multiple doors leading off it in what she estimated was the direction of the skybridge. Nyoka was good at moving smooth and unobtrusively, so that the eyes of enemies and predators alike seemed to slide right past her. Max took the opposite approach. He strode with confidence, as though the very thought of anyone stopping him was preposterous. 

Pearl pretended she was on a call and just went for it, walking like she was supposed to be there. She picked a door that felt lucky and let herself through. The three of them regrouped in the corridor outside, grinning with relieved elation, and made their way across to the administrative building. Once inside, all it took was following the beautifully typeset blue and silver signs, and avoiding the automechanicals that trundled by with carts full of paper. 

Really, Pearl had only been hoping to score some intel. Steal some files, or find a loose lipped secretary to talk to. But as it turned out, they’d located the administrator himself. Heckeridge Walpole had wild grey eyebrows and round glasses with golden frames. He peered anxiously over the top of them as the crew of the Unreliable made their way into his office. Nyoka examined the contents of his drinks cabinet while Max, well mannered as ever, closed the door behind them.

“I really must insist you stay with the tour group,” Walpole said, getting to his feet. He was a small, neat man, with smart clothing entirely unsuited to the cold of Typhon. Perhaps to compensate, he’d grown a handlebar moustache, but unlike his eyebrows it looked kind of sparse. 

“We’re not with the tour. We’re freelancers.” Freelancers seemed to be considered a slightly dirty word in Halcyon, but it still thrilled Pearl to be able to say it. Her own ship, her pick of the work, her own bits to spend as she pleased. “We’re here about the distress call.”

“Distress call? What distress call?”

“The one about the marauder problem?”

“Marauders? Oh my stars! We don’t have marauders here!” He leaned casually against his desk. Max stepped forward. 

“Do you think you’ll be able to press that panic button with a broken wrist?” Walpole snatched his hand away as though the surface of the desk was suddenly hot. 

“Alright!” he hissed. “How do you know about the marauders?”

“We saw them! They attacked us at the end of the canusky ride!”

Walpole’s tone grew patronising, and Pearl was tempted to let Max at him after all. 

“The stalwart colonists fighting off the marauders has been an integral part of the Glacial Age entertainment package for months now! The spectacular scene was choreographed by Maverick Johnson. Glacial Age spared no expense.”

“You’re telling me those are actors?”

“A few actors, yes, but mostly just loyal employees who are willing to do what it takes to bring in the customers.”

“So they work a full shift here, then they go down to the market and dress up in fur?” An awful suspicion was beginning to dawn in the back of her mind. 

“Of course! We can’t afford to slow down production.”

Pearl laid it out on her fingers. “Let me guess… you had a bunch of tired workers pulling double shifts, then one day all of a sudden they were less tired? And a little while after that, marauders started to show up?”

“Fine.” Walpole sagged back into his chair. “Spacers Choice screwed us, but I had to let it happen! My people are exhausted… I need to get rid of the marauders, but I don’t know what to do. If word got out that we had marauders on Typhon no one would want to come here, and our profits are sub zero already! I definitely didn’t send a distress call. ”

“I told you,” she said. “We can deal with the marauder problem.”

“I’ll make it worth your while.” He paused, and his voice grew finicky. “If you keep it to yourselves, of course. There can’t be any witnesses.”

“Cap’n.” Nyoka spoke up before Pearl had the chance to reply. She hadn’t moved, apparently still fascinated with the variety of Icedberg Aged that was available, but her ears were sharp. “Someone’s coming.” 

Pearl and Max moved as one, stepping outward so that they could keep both the door and the desk in their line of site. Corporate guards appeared in the doorway, but Walpole waved them away. 

“Stand down,” he drawled. “These freelancers are here about a job.” 

The way he said it, Pearl wanted to break his wrist herself.


	4. Chapter 4

The Captain was quiet as they made their way through the facility and back out to the surface of Typhon. At this point they were guests rather than intruders, albeit guests who were being invited to leave, and so Max had time to contemplate his surroundings. The efficient flow of the manufactory ought to have lifted his spirits, and yet he felt his hackles rising as he saw the strain on the faces of the workers, the dullness in their eyes. There would be a Vicar here, preaching hard work and loyalty and Adrenatime exactly as Max had, both scorning and envying the way his congregation so easily bought what he was selling. It discomforted him immensely, and so he focussed instead on his anger at Walpole; whining for aid one moment, presuming to instruct them in the next breath. 

He wasn’t the only one. Pearl kicked at the base of a gracefully wrought iron lamp post, the decorative touch indicating that they were back in a section of the facility designed for tourist eyes. It reverberated with a satisfying clang. 

“What a jerk,” she muttered. 

That was all she seemed willing to concede on the matter. Max flattered himself that he knew the Captain better than anyone in Halcyon, that she shared aspects of herself with him that remained hidden to other, lesser men. And yet when faced with matters that troubled her, her initial response was still to retreat into herself. She would not permit him to provide spiritual guidance, convinced as she was that her destiny lay outside the Plan and therefore his purview. And so the lack of conversation persisted until they were sitting around the table in the galley, clutching steaming mugs that smelled sweet and undeniably boozy. He took a sip, and felt the warmth spreading through his belly and up to his ears. 

“Why, Ms Ramnarin-Wentworth, this tastes astonishing. Where on Monarch -“ _of all places_ , he managed to stop himself from adding, “- where on Monarch did you learn to create such elaborate drinks?”

“Hot buttered rum’n’somethin’ is a trail classic. Monarch gets cold at night. The butter gives you the extra calories you need and the rum makes it so you don’t mind as much. The rapt musk? That’s my own twist on it.”

“I can never tell when you’re joking.”

Max was still mulling how to broach the subject of the job they’d been offered, but he was beaten to the punch. 

“Couple bits for ‘em, Captain?”

Pearl sighed and stirred her drink. 

“Well we’re not taking the job,” she said with a definitive tone. “I just… I liked those guys, you know? They’re doing their best; them and their canuskies. Their boss gave them the stuff that turns them into marauders, and now he wants to kill ‘em all off so no one else finds out about it.”

Gorgon weighed heavily on her mind. Both himself and the Captain had suffered nightmares of the place, and he suspected the rest of the crew could say the same. And tendrils of that nightmare were woven all through the colony, in a pattern that was only discernible once one was aware of its root. 

“That’s Halcyon for ya,” Nyoka said, and raised her cup in an ironic toast. Max inclined his head to her. 

“On this matter we are in agreement. The problem is system wide. If we’re not going to take the bounty, we should continue on our course of assisting Dr Welles. Removing the Board will benefit the workers of Typhon as much as anywhere else.”

Arguments for the greater good rarely held sway with the Captain, but she sighed again and acquiesced. 

“Maybe we should warn them...”

“I expect they already know.”

Pearl scowled. “Fine,” she said. “We’ll wait til everyone’s home, then we head for Monarch. Tell Catherine the marauders are drinking all her liquor. Maybe she’ll have some more work for us.” Her eyes were large and dark. Max placed his hand on hers by her side, beneath the table, and squeezed gently. She squeezed back, with a quiet smile of gratitude. 

Max felt a pang of something irrational and tender. He might not be able to convince Pearl of the significance and righteousness of her actions through appealing to the Plan, but she trusted him nonetheless. And it was pleasant, sitting and drinking together in the warmth and the quiet. 

It was over all too soon. The voice of the automechanical came echoing up the metallic staircase, full of the perverse blend of disappointment and glee that meant it sensed the prospect of cleaning. 

“WHAT A MESS!”

They trooped down to the airlock to find Mr Millstone and Ms Holcomb, their boots coated in dirty, slushy ice which was melting across the floor. SAM was cleaning it as fast as it spread, while preventing them from entering any further into the ship, a service for which Max was grateful. Felix wore a ludicrous fur hat, with flaps that hung down over his ears, while Parvati held a plush toy sprat in garish Glacial Age colours. 

“Captain, we found… well, I guess you oughta see what we found.”

“Yeah! This is big, boss!”

Millstone was excitable, and Max might have assumed that the big discovery was something rather inane; a new variant of sickly purpleberry candy perhaps. But Parvati was anxious enough that she had overcome her reluctance to bother the Captain; so unless the matter somehow concerned a gift for Captain Tennyson, which seemed unlikely, then it was probably of significance. 

Max went with Pearl as she followed them back toward the ice hotel, with Felix providing a running commentary the entire way. 

“... so me and Par decided to head back to the market. We wanted to pick up a souvenir, like. And then I saw it - this huge crystal building, made of ice!”

Parvati chimed in. 

“When Miz Gilsson was telling us about it on the tour, I was real interested in the construction. But it turns out it’s empty.”

“Yeah! These guards were all _beat it rungleech, no one’s allowed in_.” He lowered his voice in a mockery of authority that, Max couldn’t help but notice, was rather similar to his parody of Max himself. “But I said I’m a tourist, see? And I wanna tour it. So we found another way in.”

Max rolled his eyes, but followed them around the side of the admittedly impressive structure. Someone had chipped away at the base of the hotel’s rear wall and dug into the surrounding snow, forming a tunnel that would permit entry into the structure beneath the sheer slab of ice. The prospect was horrifying. 

With the blithe idiocy of youth, Millstone slipped through the gap head first. Parvati followed him. Pearl looked at Max with her eyebrow raised, but then shrugged and went to the ground, working her way through. Her hips caught for a moment and she gave a little huff of irritation, but then she wriggled and she was gone. 

Max felt the skin in the small of his back prickle with sweat. As much as his brain told him that there was no danger, and his heart told him that if there _was_ danger then he needed to help his friends fight it; his humours insisted that sticking his head blindly into a dark confined space, a literal black hole, was the most terrifying prospect in the universe. He grimaced and cursed under his breath. He might remain outside and claim to have been standing lookout, but if the corporate guards did discover his presence then he would simply draw more attention to the rest of the crew. On the other hand, making his way back to the ship now would be an embarrassing admission of defeat.

He looked again at the hole. Apart from the freshly scuffed snow left by Millstone and the others, the edges of the tunnel were worn smooth. The walls surrounding it were flawless, suggesting that any cracks or chips caused by its formation had long since frozen back over. It had been there a while. 

Max was suddenly, unaccountably reminded of The Sprat That Lead Them To Water. The thirsty colonists had followed the creature through a crevice in the rocks, reasoning that where an animal could survive they might do likewise. They had drunk from an underground stream and roasted the sprat, thereby embodying humanity’s ability to adapt and their mastery of nature. 

Pearl would hate that story, he thought with a fond grimace, and took a deep breath. At the last moment his nerve failed him and he turned to go feet first, shuffling awkwardly forward. For an awful moment he feared he would become stuck, but then he took a deep breath in, raised his arms over his head, and slid.


	5. Chapter 5

Pearl got to her feet, winded by how cold and dry the air was inside the hotel. Her breath steamed in front of her, illuminated by the blue-grey light that filtered in through the walls. Empty metal sconces had started to rust, staining the surrounding ice. The walls were carved with elaborate motifs, but the floors were bare. They'd built the place but then abandoned it before they even had any guests. Which was hardly Glacial Age’s biggest crime, but it was a stupid waste none the less, she thought. The silence was like a physical thing pressing in on her ears, and she stood stock-still, waiting until she heard the shuffling and grumbling that indicated Max had entered the hotel behind her.

She crept past rooms filled with furniture half-covered in dust sheets, and followed Felix and Par through the corridors and down a flight of stairs. Their footsteps rang with a strange muffled echo. It was darker down here, below the surface of the planet, but she could just make out a stack of crates and burlap sacks piled against one wall. Felix gestured at them, flailing with his hands like he was trying to compensate for having to stay quiet. 

“It’s a whole bunch of explosives and sundry!” he whispered. 

She lifted the lid from one of the crates, and heard Max behind her bite back a curse. It was full of dull grey bricks, their surfaces shimmering slightly with condensation, packed alongside spools of wire and metal blasting caps. Pearl didn’t know much about explosives, but she knew enough to know that this was a lot of them. Parvati was biting her lip, but Felix was delighted. 

“I figure if we get this back to the ship, we could sell it for a whole mess of bits! Like Ms Hagen always says, it’s _legitimate salvage_. Right, boss?”

Max rolled his eyes at the flight of fancy that had dragged him away from the warmth of the Unreliable. “If it were that valuable, then why would they have simply left it here,” he hissed. Behind them, in the stairwell, a drop of water struck the ground with a metallic, hollow sound. Pearl put her hand on his forearm, then shifted to uncover another crate. 

This one was different. Instead of the bricks, there were little paper tubes, neatly packed into boxes branded in silver and blue. _Activate 3 MINUTES before finale_ was stamped on the side of each one. 

She reached in and held up one of the tubes. 

“Maybe it’s not been left,” she murmured. “Maybe it’s been hidden.”

She scraped her fingers and her knees pulling herself back out through the ice tunnel, but Pearl barely felt it as she turned everything over in her mind. The explosives she could believe might be left over from construction; but the fireworks had gone off at the end of the canusky ride, which meant they had something to do with Petra and her crew. An abandoned hotel was the perfect place to hide something you wanted kept secret; and that was exciting, and scary. 

The thought of leaving hadn't sat right with her. The canusky riders were screwed twice over. They were risking their sanity with Adrenatime to help their corp, and their boss was trying to cross them off because of it. Real Halcyon gratitude. But the discovery of the explosives made it seem like maybe they were trying to do something about it, and if that was the case, then Pearl was gonna help out. It was the right thing to do. It was also the sensible thing to do. A water manufactory was infrastructure, it was important. Having control of it, or having an in with the people who did, was going to be essential once the Board were gone. She didn’t know how she felt about the fact that there was now a part of her brain that kept track of stuff like that.

She took the crew and made her way to the canusky paddock with a renewed sense of determination. A few of the riders were outside, seemingly busy with chores. To her surprise, Ellie was with them, standing next to a tall man wearing a fine hat that was incongruous with his Glacial Age overalls. 

Petra turned, about to launch into her sales pitch, but her face fell when she saw who was approaching. 

“Unless you want another tour, there’s nothing I have to say to you.”

“We found your stash.” She held the firework out in front of her to show Petra. “And we met with Heck Walpole. He seems…”

“Mean,” Parvati said firmly. 

“Out of his depth,” Max suggested. 

“The guys a primal’s ass!” Felix exclaimed. 

“... yeah. So if you wanna go up against him, we’d like to help. Tell us what’s been going on.”

Petra sighed, and her long limbs seemed to lose a little of their tension. She looked defeated. 

“Fine. We do have a plan.” She sat on a crate, and Pearl sat with her. “We tried our best, alright? Management were pushing us harder and harder and getting less and less back. People were exhausted, machinery was breaking down… then on top of it all they started doing all this Founding Day shit. We were staging the marauder fights, but accidents would happen and we’d get hurt. We’re not actors.”

The man next to Ellie coughed. 

“Some of us are,” he said pointedly. 

“Hey Captain.” Ellie had a grin in her voice. “Say hello to Milo DeWinter. Just someone I used to know.”

The name was lost on Pearl, but she heard Max give a sharp intake of breath. 

“Milo DeWinter, the heir to Glacial Age?”

“Milo DeWinter the actor,” Milo DeWinter replied. “I didn’t even want to come here, but Mr Johnson said I’d be perfect for the part of marauder number four. Everything was going well, until some of my colleagues started to get a little too into character.”

“Everything was _not_ going well!” Petra snapped. “We were getting injuries, frostbite. And still having to work at the plant as well. One day they brought in this stuff from Spacers Choice. It was supposed to give us more energy, and to be honest, it was working. But then… people started changing. Gael…”

She fell silent, covering her face. Pearl’s heart ached for her; but the skin on the back of her neck was crawling, remembering the young man gnashing his teeth. 

“Where is Gael?” she said as gently as she could while picturing her crew being stalked by the thing that was Petra’s brother. 

“We put him outside,” Petra replied, her voice dull. 

“We’ve been putting the marauders outside the walls, but it’s not a permanent solution,” Milo said crisply. “Walpole has been utterly ineffective. Wouldn't even listen to us when we tried to raise it. That’s why I sent the distress call.”

Petra was outraged. “I asked you not to! If corporate send people they’re just going to kill the marauders. Those were… those are our friends!”

“She’s right,” Pearl said. “Walpole offered us the job. He wants us to wipe out the marauders. He also wants us to make sure there’s no witnesses left to talk about it afterwards.”

Ellie’s interest was piqued. “A job like that’s got to be worth a lot of bits if we took it. Plus, a guy who owns a water planet would owe us a favour.”

That was uncomfortably close to Pearl’s own thought process, and she snarled. Milo gasped in betrayal. 

Ellie was unabashed. “What? I said _if_!”

“Petra.” Pearl steered the conversation back on track. “What’s the plan?”

Petra composed herself. 

“We’re going to use explosives to destroy the guard post and the comms relay. Then we’re going to let the people outside back in to cause a distraction. The fireworks will make it seem like it’s just the end of another show. And we’re going to take over the bottling plant.” She got wearily to her feet. “We tried our best, but we can’t go on like this. If that makes me a dissident, I guess I’m a dissident.”

The weird pride with which Petra said dissident reminded Pearl of the way she said freelancer, and that decided her. 

“We’re gonna help you,” she said. 

She stood with Petra and looked around at the tired, determined people. A thought occurred to her. 

“Do you guys know how to fight? For real, I mean.”

Most of them shook their heads, and she remembered her first days in Emerald Vale, alternating between terror and rage as she flailed away with the sword Pelham had given her. It was a miracle she’d survived, and she’d been fit and strong from her life on Earth. It would be an even greater one if these workers did. 

Milo stepped forward. 

“I’m skilled in combat - I was an extra on three seasons of _Broken Jaws & Broken Hearts_!”

Max scoffed. “ _Broken Jaws & Broken Hearts_ is utter nonsense. The tossball on display is ludicrous, and there are so many orgies it’s a surprise anyone even has the time left over to play.”

“Sounds like you know a lot about it, Max.” Felix grinned. “Maybe I should check it out?”

“I was merely watching for research purposes,” Max snapped. 

Pearl laughed behind her hand, but she didn't want them at each other’s throats while they planned, so she sent Felix back to the ship to pick up Nyoka and their gear. The crew watched as the canusky riders began to assemble the few real weapons they possessed. They shut their charges away in their pen, petting them and giving them extra handfuls of treats. It had the air of a farewell. 

“Petra,” Pearl said as they waited, “I don’t think it’s a good idea to let the mar- the people outside back in. They might attack the wrong people. And they might get hurt.”

“But they would want to be here! Gael would want to - he helped me plan this!”

Pearl took a deep breath. 

“About Gael. I know he’s changed… I need to tell you something. I don’t think he’s going to change back. We were on Gorgon, and -“

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Petra said with her eyes narrowed. 

Before they could talk any further, SAM trundled into the settlement. The automechanical was carrying the steel packing crate that held their armour. Perched on his shoulders, Felix was waving cheerily. Nyoka was beside them, already wearing her armour and wielding her heavy gun. The sight of the hunter in her hand crafted armour gave Pearl an idea. 

“Ok, how about this? Gael stays outside where he’s safe, and me and my crew take their place. We’ll use your costumes from the show, and we can hold off the guards while you get to the control room. Anyone who sees what’s happening will think we’re marauders. The Board would probably come after dissidents, but if they think the place has just been overrun by marauders, they might leave you alone.”

“What’s in it for you?”

“Bits and water,” Pearl replied promptly, before she lost her nerve. “We might need a lot of it, real soon.”

Petra raised her eyebrows slightly at that, then she smiled. They shook on it. 

Ellie’s armour, like Nyoka’s, was of her own design. As a pirate, the effect was to intimidate her enemies as well as to protect her, so it would do fine for a marauder. Pearl wore a colourful set of plates she’d acquired from the Gardeners of Groundbreaker when they weren’t looking, but she thought the distinction would be lost on most onlookers.

The other three presented more of a problem. Felix proclaimed his loyalty to the Rizzo’s Rangers through his pink white and purpleberry armour, while Parvati still trusted in that first set of green and gold Spacers Choice plates that Pearl had scavenged for her. They did the best they could, smearing themselves in mud and covering their armour with bits and pieces of the marauder costumes. Max was sleek in cobalt blue. He draped himself in a long fur cloak and pulled a patched-up old respirator over his head, and refused to do anything more. Pearl gave him an affectionate roll of her eyes. He could stand at the back, and once he got going he was probably the one who acted most like a marauder anyway. 

She picked a helmet that was decorated with protruding woolycow horns from the pile and set it jauntily on her head. They were as ready as they were gonna get.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Especial thanks to JumpShip for being a big support when writing this chapter, for bouncing ideas and just being a general all round good human.


	6. Chapter 6

“Anyone else feel like this is in bad taste?”

Ms Ramnarim-Wentworth was grumbling as they made their way towards the administrative building, dressed as the most bloodthirsty of marauders. Max was inclined to agree with her, but he held his tongue, because when he did speak his voice was distorted by the filters in his helmet and the sound irritated him immensely. The helmet was uncomfortably warm, and it stank of other people’s breath. He had worn similar gear to walk upon the surface of Tartarus, and he remembered feeling unhappy and frightened. Unhappy and frightened, and the memory made him angry. He quickened his step in anticipation. 

Max had once told the Captain that violent enthusiasm had been a thing of his youth. At the time, he was being truthful. His years in Edgewater had worn away at him, drained him of his vital spark as he strove in vain to find new insight into the Equation. A struggle with ever diminishing returns; a vicious spiral. He rubbed without realising at the inside of his arm.

He’d been so sure that Bakonu’s journal would be the key to breaking free of the cycle. And in a strange way, it had proven to be so. Free will was an illusion, his killing of Chaney had finally convinced him on the matter. Violence was like sex, and to some extent tossball. Forces in synchronicity and in opposition, action and reaction, synapses firing without the need for conscious thought. Simply the Grand Plan expressing itself through him, and he was its most perfect vessel. Destiny only revealed itself in hindsight, and now he was as enthusiastic as he’d ever been.

His devotions completed, he lined up alongside the Captain. The helmet she wore suited her well, barbarian finery with its protruding horns, but beneath it she was frowning. Pearl claimed to reject predetermination entirely, which meant that, to her mind, the success or failure of her plan weighed upon her alone. Ms Ramnarim-Wentworth and Ms Holcomb were to round up and protect the tourists; Dr Fenhill and Millstone, fast and light, would enter the upper levels of the building through the bottling plant. The automechanical was left behind to defend the settlement, the workers too sick to participate in the uprising... and the canuskies, Pearl had insisted on that. Of course, the Equation encompassed all within its mighty logic, whether one believed in it or not. And Max was predestined to kill anyone who harmed a hair on her head. 

He could hear the idiot scion of the DeWinter family a little way off, muttering to himself. “I’m a marauder, my motivation is that I’m a marauder.” What might drive a man such as DeWinter to abandon his position of comfort and security in the Gilded City? Was he supposed to be here; or were they about to bear witness as he was snapped back? The helmet made his head ache, it was stifling and he could barely fucking see. His stomach was tight and sour. 

Blue and silver stars burst overhead. “Oh Law, it’s the signal!” Ms Holcomb exclaimed unnecessarily, but Max barely heard her, as he felt adrenaline spike within him and then flood through his system. He was aware of Nyoka and Parvati peeling off to his right, towards the market. Felix and Ellie running ahead, howling like marauders to clear a crowd of tourists milling around the entrance to the bottling plant. A corporate trooper blocked his path, and he raised his gun. The man took both barrels to his chest and staggered, and Pearl crashed into him with her shoulder, took his legs out with her sword. 

Finally, blissfully, Max’s mind was clear. There were no more decisions to vex him; his options collapsed down into a single golden path that extended before him, leading him only to where he needed to be, because to be elsewhere would be death. Another trooper charged towards him but he feinted sideways, put his full body weight behind the butt of his shotgun and swung back across, heard a dull liquid thud as he connected. Balance and counterbalance. 

He racked two rounds into his gun and moved on. They were near the door now. The guards stepped forward, and one of them brought her shock-stick down, aiming for his head, but he caught the impact on his forearm and crashed her back against the wall. Pearl cut the other guard down with a single blow, brutal and graceful. Bullets plinked off their armour, and Max realised that the autoturret above the desk was firing on them. He shot at it and it exploded. Pearl was on the stairs, the receptionist cowering beneath his desk, and he followed her. 

An armoured trooper waited for them at the top, and suddenly Pearl was moving differently, faster than it was possible to process. She was up the stairs and inside her opponent’s reach before he knew what was happening, sliding her sword up into his armpit as he attempted to raise his gun and then blazing past him. Max finished the job with his shotgun. He was vaguely aware that he was shouting. The canusky riders streamed past them, deeper into the offices, but they were irrelevant. He was Max, and he was destined to prevail. 

They caught Walpole in his office, and to his credit the man was standing his ground, gesturing wildly with an expensive looking pistol. Millstone shoved through the door ahead of Max, ignoring the stray bullet that embedded itself in his armour, and brought his tossball stick down on the man’s arm. The pistol dropped to the ground and Walpole sagged, defeated.

He called off his troops, and Petra Gilsson did the same. Ms Holcomb and Ms Ramnarim-Wentworth arrived shortly after, reporting that those who had been at the marketplace were unharmed. At the sight of them, the tension left Pearl’s shoulders, and her eyes shone. Max smiled despite himself, feeling the warmth of her joy at the sight of her crew, safe and together once more. He ripped the hated helmet from his head, rubbed at his face and swept his sweat-soaked hair back out of his eyes. Pearl cupped the back of his neck and kissed him. It made him light headed, and he realised that he was exhausted. 

For all its grandeur, the administrators office was too small for six people in armour and assorted workers, and so the majority of them moved through to a larger area, leaving the Captain, Ms Gilsson and Walpole behind to negotiate. Max went with them. His curiosity regarding the outcome was outweighed by the sudden heavy numbness of his body, and the ache in his bastard knee. 

Max sank into a faded gelvet couch that smelled of stale dust, groaning with relief. One of the windows had been smashed in, and freezing cold air was ruffling piles of documents, sending them drifting down to the floor a few sheets at a time. He wondered idly whether any of the vendors contained anything edible. 

People were carrying in bodies, laying them out in a neat row along one wall. Max got wearily to his feet and stared down at them. Two corporate guards in their blue and silver armour, next to three fallen canusky riders, peaceful in death. There were likely others, still out on the ice. Nature abhorred equality, but he was struck by how similar their faces appeared in death, slack and empty and vaguely surprised. The guards were likely faithful, if not necessarily devout; but when it came to dissidents matters were less certain. Although what had provoked Ms Gilsson’s people to rebellion had been a matter of survival, not abstract Philosophist nonsense; thereby proving that they held at least to the first Pillar. 

There was a man leaning on a desk close by, seeming in a similarly exhausted state to Max  
himself. Max touched his arm to draw his attention. “Might I say a few words over the bodies of our fallen comrades, to commend their atoms to the universe?” 

It felt strangely important to him as he said it. Funerals in Edgewater had been tedious affairs marking futile deaths, and to his lasting shame he had spoken more than one eulogy while suffering with a hangover. But these people truly had laid down their lives for the greater good. 

To his surprise, the man stopped abruptly back from him, his eyes widening in alarm. But then he looked down and saw blood spattered across his breastplate. It ran down one arm almost to his fingertips, which meant that now it must be on his face as well. 

Ms Holcomb spoke up. “I know he don’t look it, sir, but he is a Vicar. A real one,” she added, nodding for emphasis. 

Max removed his gloves. “I would thank you,” he said with great dignity, “to hand me a towel.”

Hands clean, he knelt, ignoring the creaking pain in his knee. Thirsty and tired, he was uncertain what to say. He had no way of knowing the lifetime incomes of the troopers, and to claim that the dissidents had served their employers well could hardly be considered verity. 

“May their names be underlined in the Equation. They died as they lived, playing their part in the Plan,” he began. A platitude to be sure, yet as he spoke the words he was utterly convinced of their truth. Empiricism was a virtue, and based on everything he had observed it was clear that the Board and even the church hierarchy had been lying to him. Serving ones employer and serving the Plan were in fact utterly unrelated.

“They are exactly where they are supposed to be. Their bodies may decay, but their atoms return to the Universe, to be incorporated into the next phase of the Equation. May their names be underlined,” he repeated, and reached to touch each of their foreheads with his thumb, the ritual of the final tally, assuring the Architect that each of his creations were accounted for. He closed his eyes and sent a silent thank you to the dead men for the insight they had helped him realise. 

When he opened them, he realised Pearl was standing in the doorway, watching him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to jackalgirl and jumpship for being legends :)


	7. Chapter 7

The door to the office was made of warm heavy wood, with a central glass panel that was frosted in a snowflake motif. Pearl pulled it shut with a satisfying click, and then leaned back against it. Her sword needed cleaning before she put it away, so she propped it on the wall beside her, staining the wallpaper some. She folded her arms, and rested, and watched. 

Petra and Walpole were both furious, both afraid. The way Walpole was holding his arm, she thought it was probably broken; and he was the captive of the people who’d done it. Inferior people, to his way of thinking; and she could tell from the look on his face that he was outraged as well as terrified. At the back of her mind Petra was probably thinking something similar. She was in the administrator’s office, quite literally above her station, and she had him at gunpoint. She might have been imagining this moment for years, never quite believing she’d actually get there. Pearl knew the feeling. 

Petra had lost friends, she’d lost her brother, she’d been worked to the bone. Her hate was real. But there was wishing you could kill someone, and then there was the fact of actually doing it in cold blood. Pearl figured there were two ways to go about it. You could get yourself so enraged that just the sight of the person was provocation enough. That was what Max did. Or you could just genuinely not care that the other person was a person. Petra didn’t seem like she’d be capable of that. 

“You killed Gael!” Petra began stalking stiffly across the floor, towards Walpole. Her voice was shaking but her aim was perfectly steady. “He gave the company everything and that still wasn’t enough for you.”

The dull flush faded from Walpole’s cheeks and he grew pale, anger swinging back towards fear. 

“Wait, please! I can explain, I… tell me about… Gael, was it? Who was he?”

“He was my brother!” She had Walpole backed right up against the wall. 

“Please… please let me explain…”

“I’d hear him out.” Pearl felt it was always better to have an explanation, even if it sucked. It made things easier to process if you knew the reason behind them. The stuff where there was no reason was what messed with your head. 

They looked back at her, Petra incredulous, Walpole full of desperate hope. She shrugged. 

“If you don’t like it, you can still kill him after.”

“Fine.” Petra brought the arm holding the gun down by her side. 

Walpole coughed and visibly composed himself. 

“Alright. And for what it’s worth, I am truly sorry about your brother. I didn’t know what to do… Glacial Age’s market share was falling, we couldn’t turn enough of a profit on our physical sales alone. I got the idea from the Bureau of Exploration. I thought people might travel to see our planet; it’s so different from everywhere else in Halcyon! But there wasn’t room in the budget for more workers to man the attractions.” He sighed. “You never trust the Moon Man. Spacers Choice were offering a solution, and their low low prices… I should have known it was too good to be true, but I didn’t have a choice.” He looked straight at Petra, and Pearl admired him for that. “The adrenatime killed your brother, and I was the one who authorised it.”

“I knew that already,” Petra said, her voice dull. She didn’t raise her gun, and Walpole seemed encouraged. 

“What happened was terrible, it was a mistake, I see that now. Talk to me. There must be something I can do to make it up to you. Something you want.” 

Petra hesitated, and Walpole pressed his advantage. He stepped past her, aiming to be behind his desk. Pearl stepped forward smartly and kicked the chair away before he could sit. 

“If we’re going to talk,” she said, “let’s talk on the level.”

She went to the elegant cabinet that was mounted on the wall, poured three glasses of limited edition Iceberg Aged and placed them on the desk. Walpole merely looked at his, unable to lift it without releasing his injured arm. 

“We want the manufactory,” Petra said, and Walpole scoffed. 

“What would a bunch of production-line plebeians hope to achieve with a facility like this?”

“What happens to you if the plant shuts down, Heck?” Pearl asked. She took a sip and coughed. She didn’t even like that stuff that much, although she knew Max would be delighted with it. 

“I’d be sent back to Byzantium in disgrace!”

“How about you, Petra?”

“We would die,” she said simply. 

“So I’d say these guys are better incentivised.”

Petra seemed to grow in confidence. “We want to farm water and woolies, and sell what we don’t use; and we want to keep the profit for ourselves, if there is any. Not send it all to Byzantium.” Pearl felt her heart soar at the thought of it. It was so right, somehow; it was what the whole colony could look like. 

Heck also seemed to brighten at the prospect. 

“Keep all the profits here, you say… an interesting proposition. Of course; you'd need someone to keep head office off your back. To make those quarterly reports seem plausible. It would be a lot of work, but they do say it fortifies the spirit!

“What do you think, Petra? You’re the boss after all.” Pearl made sure that point was emphasised. 

Petra sighed. “I really want to kill you. But this is what my friends want… it’s what Gael wanted. It’s why we made the plan in the first place. And we can’t do it without you.” She finished her drink. 

Pearl did likewise. “Sounds like a win-win.”

Petra raised her gun again. 

“But if you turn on us, we will have killed you and fed you to the canuskies by the time the troopers get here.”

Walpole flinched, alarmed. 

“On that note, I need to tell you something,” he said hurriedly. “As a gesture of goodwill!” He took a deep breath. “When I realised you’d destroyed the communication relay - a stroke of genius, by the way - I dispatched guards beyond the wall to send a signal from the primary transmitter. They’re on their way as we speak… if you hurry, you might catch them!”

Petra looked at her with wide eyes, but Pearl was already moving. 

The conference room across the corridor was crowded with the exhilarated survivors, the wounded and the dead. She could see Parvati and Felix, sitting with Milo DeWinter and gazing at him wide eyed as he talked. Ellie was tending to a woman with what looked like a dislocated shoulder. Nyoka was asleep on a couch. 

Max was with a small group of people, surrounding the bodies of the fallen laid out along one wall. His face was smeared with blood, not the elaborate patterns that Felix had affected when he’d been going through (throughly mocked for) a warpaint phase, but ugly red-brown streaks. It was on his armour and in his hair. He was standing over the bodies, and his voice was calm and clear. The words he said were beautiful, and he looked transported. Pearl couldn’t look away. 

The moment passed, and then Max simply looked tired, grimacing when he put his weight on his bad leg. But when Pearl reached her hand out toward him, he smiled without hesitation. 

They hurried across the compound to the canusky sheds. The creatures inside were howling, and they sprang outside as soon as the doors were unlatched, gambolling and twirling on the spot as they wagged their feathery tails so hard it made their entire bodies shake. Two of Petra’s crew brought a sled to the clearing in front of the gate. Unlike the tour sleds, it was small and light; and required only a single canusky to pull it. The first one they captured was the one that had reminded Parvati of Udom, and he wheezed and yipped with enthusiasm as the handlers adjusted his harness. Pearl just had time to think that she didn’t envy the handlers whose job was to clear out the mess in the sheds, and then the gates were open and Udom was sprinting. 

The sleigh ride had been fun, but it was nothing compared to what the canusky was capable of in the open field. Pearl gripped the reins and nestled deep into her blanket. The sky overhead was a blue so deep it was almost black, every star crystal clear. The only sound was the whoosh of the sled across the snow, the weird echoing tin-can barks. The transmission tower was a stark black spike against the endless white background, growing bigger with every second as they drove toward it. She felt a sheer thrill. Ice cold air streamed against her face, faster than fast with Max sitting warm and solid against her back. 

“Max, back there… I saw you praying over the people; it was beautiful. But if that’s how you really feel… why are you helping us fight the Board?”

Max’s voice rumbled through her. 

“Because the Board have wrought chaos in the name of short term profit. ‘For what profiteth a man, if he gains the whole world but loses control.’ Humanity’s true purpose lies deep within the Equation, waiting to be discerned by the most capable minds. It is far too subtle for shallow and greedy individuals such as those in Byzantium, who must not be permitted to twist the Plan to their own selfish ends.”

“Minds like yours, huh?”

Max laughed, and Pearl felt joy beneath her skin, warmer than the ice and snow and the aether itself.

The guards made a stand at the foot of the tower, but they were no match for Pearl’s sense of triumph, or Max’s impatience to get back into the warm. Afterwards, she petted Udom and scratched under his whiskey chin, while Max accessed the terminal that directly controlled the transmissions. 

“It hasn’t been used in the past three months,” he said, finally, and Pearl smiled.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fantastic character design of Udom the canid, by the amazing Kourumi!


	9. Epilogue

Max felt the thrum of contentment within him that indicated that his molecules were in alignment with the Plan. Cases of whiskey and of water were piled in the Unreliable’s hold, awaiting delivery to the House of Hospitality and the Sprat Shack. Once word got around to the right people that Glacial Age was dissident-owned and -operated, the pseudo-rebels and genuine lowlifes that SubLight serviced would be clamouring to buy. Of course, if word reached the wrong people, then the UDL might arrive on their doorstep. The outcome was already in the Equation. Regardless, the Captain had decided it was time for some R’n’R, and Max wholeheartedly concurred. 

To Mr Millstone’s dismay, and Max’s unabashed relief, the ice hotel was still unready for human habitation. Instead, Ms Gilsson had provided them them a luxury suite in the top floor of the Mammoth hotel, which was constructed from more traditional materials. It was as warm and luxurious as any spoiled Byzantine might wish for, but with a definite Typhon twist. The gilded snowflake motif was everywhere, the bed a raised platform covered in furs, and there was a real fire blazing. It was almost as hot as Groundbreaker before they had repaired the radiators, but after spending time on the freezing surface, it was perfection. 

He stood by the fire with a towel wrapped around him, slicked his wet hair back from his face,and enjoyed the sensation of the heat drying his skin. He’d taken a long, through shower to wash away the blood and the battle sweat, and now his physical hygiene reflected his spiritual hygiene. 

Pearl had acquired some rather interesting limited edition Iceberg Aged from the Administrator’s office, and he poured a finger of it into a heavy bottomed glass. It was smokey and rich, and he felt his cheeks glowing with the first mouthful. The Captain herself was reclining on the bed, naked aside from the horned helmet she had taken an inexplicable fancy to. Max couldn’t say he minded much. 

She took a sip of her own drink and smacked her lips ostentatiously in his direction.

“I know this is limited edition and small batch and what not, but it all just tastes the same to me.”

Max rolled his eyes and grinned. “I suppose it should be colour coded to help you tell the difference, like that Spectrum stuff you favour.”

Pearl stuck her tongue out at him and he laughed. A pleasant heat was stirring in his loins that had nothing to do with the liquor. Such luxury and privacy as they were experiencing was impossible to attain aboard the Unreliable, and he could think of better things to do with it than drink whiskey. He put his glass down on the side table and turned towards her, but for all his eagerness he was unable to disguise the grimace that seized him when he put his weight on his bad leg, and of course Pearl noticed, and she was concerned. 

“Is that your knee bothering you? Want me to take a look?”

He adopted the deep, smooth tone that more often than not would entice Pearl to his bed. “I want to be distracted from the pain. The whiskey helps, but I am open to other suggestions...”

She rolled her eyes at him. “C’mere, let me put some ice on it.”

“I’ve had enough of ice to last me a lifetime,” Max groused, yet he stretched willingly out on the bed, the fur pleasant against his bare skin. She kissed him and stood over him briefly, and he drank in the sight of her large dark eyes, her burnished-gold skin; the mass of curls between her legs. Then she shrugged on a robe and slipped out of the door. 

When she returned she had ice in a copper pail and a stack of fresh towels. She wrapped the ice and packed it against his knee. The cold was sharp and soothing in equal measure, and as relief flooded through him he relaxed into the bed. Pearl was smiling, pleased with herself and her skills. Max felt a surge of affection within him. She was right to be so; and frankly he was rather pleased with himself also. The Architect had been generous to him, and he was stiffening and swelling under her gaze and her touch. He threaded his fingers through her hair, thick and dark and beautifully soft, and drew her into a kiss. Her lips were soft, and he could taste a hint of whiskey, of copper and mockapple tea. 

Pearl took him by the wrists, pressed his hands gently back against the bed beneath him. She was smiling, and he smiled too. He had fancied bending her over and having her canid fashion, but truth be told he wasn’t sure his knee was up to it, and to lie back and be taken care of was very fine indeed. 

Her fingertips traced his cheekbones, his lips, down his throat to the divot between his clavicles; and then she kissed him back, bracing herself with one hand against his chest. She was straddling his thigh, hot and slick and deliciously inviting, as she reached out for something just beyond his field of view. 

A sudden shock of cold as she trailed an ice cube from the bucket down his chest and across his belly. He gasped and arched, and before he could catch his breath she was repeating the pattern with her lips, warm breath and hungry kisses that teased ever closer to where he wanted her without ever relieving his torment. 

She grinned down at him, the helmet charmingly askew on her head, then rubbed more ice, against his nipples this time. Max cursed, his voice embarrassingly strangulated as the burning cold against the sensitive tissue made it difficult to think. Then her mouth was on him, licking and nibbling the one as she froze the other, the sensation magnified to the point of equilibrium between pleasure and pain. She shifted lower, lower, and then finally his cock was in her mouth, exquisitely hot and wet. He groaned and arched as she wrapped her lips around him. She sucked and stroked with her tongue; taking him deeper, taking him almost to the point of mindlessness, but then she kissed the tip of him and withdrew. 

He wanted to grab her, to thrust, to fuck her mouth until he was spent, but she kept one forearm across his hips, pinning him down with her body weight. More cold, against his belly and the delicate skin on the inside of his thighs; and then she drew the ice cube across the most tender strip of skin between his testicles and his asshole, and Max hit a note he hadn’t managed since his days in the Stone Forest Mission boys’ choir. 

Pearl sucked his cock back into her mouth, and the sudden change in temperature was so shocking it left him with no wherewithal, no capacity whatsoever to resist, and he came hard and embarrassingly quickly. She took what he had to give her, spluttering and swallowing as she laughed at his reaction to the ice. His seed was on her face, and she wiped it with the back of her hand. 

She threw her helmet aside. Her hand pressed mere inches from his windpipe, her eyes never leaving his as he fought to catch his breath, his face hot and his mind reeling. Her other hand went between her legs where she was grinding against his thigh, and he watched helpless with pleasure as she brought herself off, crouching over him like a hunter over her prize, her prey. Law knows he was happy to be both. Her fingers went faster, darting inside her with a slick wet sound, and she was panting, a beautiful flush spreading across her chest and up her throat. Her eyes squeezed tight shut and she groaned and trembled as she came, the most beautiful sight Max had ever witnessed every time he watched it happen. He gathered her into his arms, let her rest as he brushed the loose hair from her face; and his heart was filled with an indescribable emotion so pure it was almost painful. 

After sex where Max had been dominant he tended to be cocky and talkative. But times like now, where she had taken charge, left him blissfully relaxed, almost dazed. Pearl wondered to herself which state he preferred. She wondered which one she did.

She rested her head on his chest, enjoying the easy rise and fall, the deep pounding of his pulse. He shifted, and she felt his stubble prickle as he pressed a kiss to her temple. The fire was glowing embers now, the furs soft against her skin. The room was so warm and dim it made her feel drugged, every breath drawing her closer to sleep. 

A thought occurred to her, and she tilted her head to gaze up at Max. His big green eyes were soft, his lips quirked with pleasure as her eyes met his. She loved him so much it felt too big to contain, like it could spill out of her and flood all of Halcyon if she gave it the chance. 

“Everyone in the colony should get to do this,” she said. 

Max chuckled, rumbling in her ear. 

“I’m not sure I quite have the stamina for everyone in the colony.”

Pearl elbowed him. “I don’t mean this exactly. I just… everyone who works hard and does their part should be able to enjoy themselves once in a while too. A trip to see family, a stay in a fancy room… whatever they want, you know?”

It felt right as she was saying it. That freedom to work toward what you wanted instead of just struggling to even survive, that was worthwhile. Petra had won that for her people, at the cost of her own personal revenge; and Pearl admired the hell out of her for that. She wasn’t sure she’d have been able to do the same in her position. But it was what she was fighting for, for the whole colony, and it was good to be able to put it into words. And to pull it off you needed the food and the water and the infrastructure, but those were just things. It was the people you could help with them that mattered. 

Max rolled onto his side, an invitation for her to slip her arm around his waist. The skin at the nape of his neck was soft, and she breathed in the familiar scent of his hair oil, curled into his back. 

“I’m nothing like the King,” she murmured to herself, her voice muffled between his shoulder blades. Max grunted, confused and evidently more than half asleep. 

“What…”

“We’re gonna beat the Board,” she said instead. 

“It will happen if the Plan wills it.”

“I will it,” she said, and Max kissed her hand. 

“Then I have no doubt that it will happen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, massive massive thanks to jumpship, jackalgirl and Kourumi for the help, input and encouragement you’ve given me over the course of writing this. It’s the longest and plottiest single piece I’ve ever written (epilogue non withstanding) and I couldn’t have done it without you!

**Author's Note:**

> Typically for me, I got the idea for this super Christmassy scenario at the end of January. There’s still snow on the ground where I live, so it counts, right? And temperature play with Max is for life, not just for Christmas...


End file.
